http://bbblog.org.uk/2009/12/christmas-booze-roundup-2009/

http://bbblog.org.uk/?p=148

Christmas is traditionally a time of over indulgence and I am far from being someone who wants to buck tradition (any excuse). There may have been turkey, pies, bologneses and casseroles over the festive period, but much more importantly there has been booze. Here’s what I’ve been drinking:

Beer

My friend Mr Utobeer came through for me again, after an unplanned drop-in while wandering around Borough Market with Mondoagogo a few days before Christmas, and added to my bottle of Orkney Dark Island Special Reserve (left until after Christmas so as to be shared with people who love nice beer more than my family). Other than some bottles grabbed as a present for someone (as my order from Brewdog hasn’t been sent yet as they haven’t yet brewed one part of it – a bottle of the second batch of Tactical Nuclear Penguin) I also grabbed, and have since drunk:

Harviestoun Ola Dubh Special 40 Reserve: I tried the 16 a few weeks back and discovered at the same time that they now did a beer matured in a 30 year old Highland Park cask. Then I went to the SMWS last week and was informed that they also do a 40, which they had a couple of bottles of at obscene prices. Then I found one at Utobeer for the scary price of £7.60. The verdict – much like with the 16 year old it wasn’t all that impressive. It was a marked difference from the younger barrelled beers, with more of a woody whiskiness than before, but still not worth the cost in my opinion. A really nice heavy dark beer still.

Brewdog Paradox: Isle of Arran: They may not have sent me my beer yet, but I still like the Brewdog chaps. And their beer. This, to continue a theme, is another whisky cask matured beer (Innis & Gunn have a lot to answer for) and one that I’ve tried before. I rather like the Arran distillery, producing some of my favourite SMWS whiskies as they have, and I really liked my last bottle of this that I tried. This one was slightly disappointing – not so influenced by the wood as the last one, but still a really good dark ale with more fruit and less vanilla than the Ola Dubh.

My Mate Nick’s Homebrew: Mr Martin, cow-orker and ginger bearded buddy extraordinaire, has recently started brewing and after discussing what he was doing to make his beer presented me with one of his first batch of bottles. I left it to settle for a while and then cracked it open on Christmas Eve. It was rather lively, needing several glasses to pour out into without overflowing with meringue-like head, and in true bottle conditioned fashion was quite sedimenty at the bottom, requiring some care in the pouring. It was very very dark and quite sweet – a definite hint of black treacle without quite so much of its burnt taste. I suffered none of the ill effects that homebrew is famed for and I also rather enjoyed it. The fluffiness and sweetness suggests that maybe it was bottled a bit early but it wasn’t the worse for it. I look forward to brew number 2. Hopefully I’ll get some more…please?

Wine

Realising a few days before Christmas that you have visiting wine loving parents and no suitable bottles on the shelf was a mild concern, as I’m a very lazy man who doesn’t like carrying things back from the supermarket. The nice folks at Naked Wines jumped in to save me with guaranteed Christmas Eve delivery if I ordered by 5pm the day before – I ordered at 4:45. The next afternoon the slightly harassed looking delivery man turned up, dumped my wine and ran away quickly – I think there were a few people who had the same idea as me. Anyways, combined with a few bottles contributed by my visitors I definitely have enough wine now, although still only 3 spare slots on the wine rack.

Milani Montepulciano d’Abruzzo (Naked Wine, Italy): My first out of the box and grabbed to match a spaghetti bolognese. I quite like Montepulciano and this was slightly disappointing – quite rough, although it did soften as it aired, without as much fruit as I hoped. However, a couple of glasses went in to the bolognese sauce and the rest of it went down quite nicely with dinner.

Vicien Syrah 2007 (Naked Wine, Argentina): Rolled into service when the first bottle from my case ran out prematurely, this was really quite good. A nice full Syrah with a good amount of fruit that got better as it breathed. I stoppered it and finished it the next day and it was still very drinkable.

Howcroft Estate Limestone Coast Merlot 2006 (Tesco, Australia): Grabbed from my step-dad’s wine rack due to the word ‘turkey’ being in the ‘goes with’ list on the back, this was a nice light Merlot, full enough to battle with the dark turkey meat as well as not being too strong as to drown out the (admittedly dry) white meat.

Hardy’s Varietal Range Shiraz 2008 (Sainsbury?, Australia): Another donation from the visitors, this one isn’t quite done yet, opened to provide some lubrication for dinner part 2 – the christmas pud (delayed until evening to allow some digestion of lunch to occur). It definitely needed some time to breathe, having a harsh edge, but it quickly softened (especially when poured through my newly acquired wine aerater [thankyou Dave'nLet] which worked much better than we had imagined) and was a nice, spicy, fruity wine, complimenting the pud better than expected.

Whisk(e)y

I’ve had a Christmas uncharacteristically light on whisky, despite a trip to Milroy’s a couple of days beforehand. I stopped by to try and pick up a bottle of rye to make the Manhattans that my mum had demanded via SMS (she had already bought cocktail cherries specially) and found that they were out of everything but a £180 per bottle Rittenhouse. I turned that down and got upsold when I tried to buy a 70cl bottle of Buffalo Trace, coming away with a 1.75l bottle (with free julep cup). I also grabbed a bottle of 15 year old Glencadam, having liked the SMWS bottling I picked up a couple of weeks back. The Trace is a solid bourbon, smooth enough to go either in cocktails or be drunk on the rocks (something that I’ve done a bit too much of since picking it up). The Glencadam is interesting – similar to the production Arran whisky in a way that I didn’t expect, with a fizzy icing sugar start, but also with a thick wedge of rubbery niceness running through the middle. It seems that I subconsciously do know my taste in whisky and Arran and Glencadam slot into it.

I used Glenfiddich instead of brandy to ignite the Christmas pud – the fact that I consider Glenfiddich to be cooking whisky when not too long ago it was one of the best whiskies that you could expect someone to have on their shelf has been commented on. It is cooking whisky…

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Anyways, a vaguely restrained christmas that should continue to be restrained through new year – I’m on call on New Year’s Eve and don’t feel like lugging multiple bottles of whisky down to Shoreham-by-Sea (where I’m going for a party), but I’m sure someone else will look after my boozey needs…</p>

Dear feckwit alleged religious alleged nutter. Air travel is tiresome enough. Now it'll be entirely impossible to fly to the US without getting yr arse inspected. Unless you're white and American of course. Mind, it sounds like some Dutch geezer went all Smeato and jumped up and down on your head in order to 'put the fire out'. Quality work there.

I didn't realise that 419s were paying for shit terrorism.


Dear BBC. 'Kees' is pronounced 'Case' you useless quasi-imperialist tossbags. Still, yer man's accent made me go all nostalgic.


That revolving present-thing on the BBC weather? I thought it was a power-up at first.

Tags: oh ffs
Current Location: Gartly Station
Current Mood: Oh FFS

Today I shall not be Hunting the Wren; although it has been revived in Suffolk.

Happy St Stephen's Day to you all! (especially any wrens listening).

I wouldn't recommend listening to M.R. James' ghost stories just before going to bed. The noise in the rest of the tower block gets amplified, the faint light in the hallway intensifies. Can anyone from outside the UK listen/watch the BBC through the iPlayer? Because James' ghost stories can be found there in case you like spooking yourself.

To us, it was part of that old tradition of listening to ghost stories during Christmas because that's the only time in the year when you are guaranteed protection from the creatures of the night. On Christmas eve itself, we watched the BBC's haunted house three-part series Crooked House. (Unfortunately only the third episode is now available on the iPlayer. Maybe you can find the others if you are a good detective.) They aren't exactly great ghost stories, but they have nice classic elements in each one of them; and the final episode, The Knocker, is genuinely creepy and had me and wink_martindale freaked out at one point.

Yesterday, we walked London's deserted streets and ended up visiting the completely abandoned Olympic site, followed by Stratford. It was a bitch realising no public transport was available and we'd have to walk back home. We stopped by a corner shop on Roman Road for some junk food and I picked up a box of Cheerios without realising it had expired in August 09. Later in the evening we spotted a cockroach crawling on our kitchen counter. We are convinced it snuck out of the Cheerios box.

( Daffodils )

Tags: dear old blighty, don't plagiarize or take on loan, ghost of troubled joe, harsh truth of the camera eye, london, push th' little daisies, santa baby, the sun always shines on tv
Current Location: Ghost End, London
Current Mood: with lowerback soreness
Current Music: Midnight Juggernauts - Into The Galaxy (Album Version) | Powered by Last.fm

Today's tweets are ( behind the cut )

Well, I woke up, scratched, swung my legs out of bed, put one foot in front of the other, etc etc.

Yeah. You don’t actually need all the detail, do you?

I’ve had a bloody lovely day. Bucks Fizz and a croissant, the company of my family, a phone call with my grandmother, a turkey dinner, a walk at dusk and a bit of TV – The Gruffalo and then Dr Who. The former was excellent, the latter was saved by John Simm quite literally chewing the scenery and Bernard Cribbins being exactly as good as I’d hoped. Really very frustatingingly part one of two, and the big reveal at the end had virtually no shock value at all.

Notable gifts: a stock pot, and a copy of Larousse Gastonomique. Next year: soup!

I am fighting the tempatation here to gush about Miranda and my family, because it’s them that put my festive spirit back, but the rest of you don’t need my vomiting up joy and rainbows everywhere.

So instead, one last set of holiday wishes for you all. Hope yours was a good as mine.

This entry was originally published at Black Ink

Tags: badgers and jam

The spectacle before me was strangely moving. Personal anxiety was blotted out by wonder and admiration; for the sheer beauty of our planet surprised me. It was a huge pearl, set in spangled ebony. It was nacrous, it was an opal. No, it was far more lovely than any jewel. Its patterned colouring was more subtle, more ethereal. It displayed the delicacy and brilliance, the intricacy and harmony of a live thing. Strange that in my remoteness I seemed to feel, as never before, the vital presence of Earth as of a creature alive but tranced and obscurely yearning to wake.

I reflected that not one of the visible features of this celestial and living gem revealed the presence of man. Displayed before me, though invisible, were some of the most congested centres of human population. There below me lay huge industrial regions, blackening the air with smoke. Yet all this thronging life and humanly momentous enterprise had made no mark whatever on the features of the planet. From this high lookout the Earth would have appeared no different before the dawn of man. No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet, could have guessed that this bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.

Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker, 1937

Tags: don't plagiarize or take on loan, reader meet author, sci-fi lullaby
Current Location: Space End, London
Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: Loscil - Resurgam | Powered by Last.fm

To say Merry Christmas to everyone on my friendslist, Guv, Gladys, Sunshine and Angelfish wanted to do something really special.

(Well, actually, cuvalwen decided to dress the poor dears up. Angelfish is still upset he had to play the girl!)

( Click for the Christmas Card )

So there is it is - Merry non-Denominational Holiday of Your Choice. May it and the coming year be filled with fun, laughter, hope and happiness.

Tags: meerkats, merry christmas, my wonderful friendslist
Current Mood: amused

We promised ourselves a walk on the beach this morning, so once Johnny Goose had been en-ovened, we took ourselves off to Withernsea. Hull was relatively mild, compared to last week, but as we got further towards the coast, the temperature dropped, there was snow laying on the fields, and black ice on the roads.

As is often the way with our personal $deity, the tide was just turning when we got there, and the steps down to the beach were very icy, so we just slipped and slid our way along the promenade. A beautiful winter morning - sunshine, brisk breeze, gorgeous clear blue sky ... it's so nice to be back on the East coast. We shall do more exploring this week, in between visitors (who are all most welcome!)

Goose is in the oven, stuffing balls are cooked, pigs in blankets are cooking, veg done, sausage rolls made for tea, bottle of champagne on the go. Life is good.

Have a great Christmas, one and all.

Tags: christmas, out, yorkshire

This is the single worst day of the year to not have a car and be in London, one of the biggest cities in the world. Here's what TFL says when I ask them about transportation options:
CHRISTMAS DAY: Please note that there are no London Buses, London Underground, National Rail, DLR and Tramlink services on Christmas Day. Journey Planner may return the first available journey on Boxing Day or last available journey on Christmas Eve in such cases.

I liked it much better in New York when the transport services were fully up and running on Christmas day - what with the overtime pay and the multiplicity of religions, it's not like there was a shortage of people to do the work. Maybe the US is just a more secular place than England - who knows! I wonder if Mexico City and Paris are also completely shut down today?

Okay, time to get my company clothes on and walk over to Streatham ...

Tags: christmas, londinium